Chapter Fifteen Pining Is Not Just for Trees
Chapter Fifteen
Pining Is Not Just for Trees
Nikki: Is it all right if I stop by the store?
Why?
To see you . . . ?
I stare down at Nikki’s text for a few moments before sliding my phone back into the drawer by the register and shutting it
with a grunt. I don’t know what to do about it, so, I do nothing.
Regan is out delivering flowers to a beauty pageant and will be tied up all day for the setup, which has left me here to hold
down the fort. I make myself busy sweeping and tidying up, letting myself focus on the mundane to keep my head on straight.
As if anything I do is straight.
It’s been two days since Nikki and I . .
. reconnected . . . at my apartment. She texted me yesterday too, although that time instead of ignoring it I gave a firm I don’t think that’s a good idea.
The easiest thing would be to block her number—except no, that’s a lie.
That wouldn’t be easy at all, judging by how many
times a day I’ve been checking my phone to see if she’s texted again.
Get her out of my system, my ass.
The jingle of the bells over the door a little while later isn’t unexpected. Nor is the sound of Nikki’s heels on the hardwood
floor of the old shop, or the scent of her perfume that still draws me to her like that cartoon skunk. I take my time putting
the broom in the closet before turning back to face her, trying very hard not to smile at the hopeful expression on Nikki’s
face and the two coffee cups in her hands.
Be cool, remember, she’s supposed to be out of my system. That was the deal. Even if she’s standing here in fuck-me lip gloss
and an old hoodie of mine that I haven’t seen in five years.
“Nice hoodie,” I say, arching an eyebrow.
“Hey, you gave this to me fair and square before you went home on the second season break.”
“Funny you just happened to pack it for this trip.”
“Isn’t it?” She smiles, passing me a cup. “It must have jumped in my carry-on while I wasn’t looking.”
“Uh-huh. And did you also already have the coffee ordered when you put on my old hoodie and asked if you could come by?” I
ask, not even trying to hide the amusement in my voice.
“Hey, I gave you two full minutes to say no before ordering . . . I may have already been in the coffee shop, though. Just
in case.”
“Right.” I take a sip of my coffee; it’s perfect, exactly as I like it. Again. Still. I shake my head and mumble, “What are we doing?”
“It looks like you were sweeping,” she offers, passing me the dustpan from where I accidentally left it sitting on one of
the racks. “And I’m just bringing Cinderella her coffee.”
“Funny,” I say, carrying it back to storage. When I come back, I find her studying some of the plants by the window. “You
hanging around town for long this time?”
“As long as it takes,” she says, not looking up from the delicate petals she’s tracing her fingers over. I shiver, definitely
not imagining getting her fingers back on me.
“Takes for what?” I ask, trying to pull it together.
Nikki sighs and looks over at me. “Do you really want to talk about heavy stuff right now?” she asks. “We can, if you do,
but it seems like you don’t, and I’d rather just . . . be here if you’d let me.”
“That’s a first,” I say. “Since when have you ever wanted to be anywhere you actually were?”
“Since I found you again,” she answers honestly. “Since you didn’t say no when I asked to come by today.”
“Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?”
She takes another sip of her coffee and leans against the counter. My stomach does a little swoop at the glint in her eye.
“I don’t remember you ever having a problem with thick. In fact, I’m pretty sure that your favorite strap-on of mine was very—”
“Okay, no,” I say, blushing down to my toes. “None of that.”
“None of what?” she asks, batting her eyelashes innocently.
“Stop it,” I laugh. “No innuendo, no talking about toys or strap-ons . . . and no sex. Again. That was a mistake.”
“That’s a rude way to talk about me giving you multiple orgasms,” she deadpans.
“Thank you for them, they were lovely, but it can’t happen again. No friends-with-benefits stuff. We needed to get it out
of our systems, and we did. Officially. Period.”
“Okay.” She shrugs, like she doesn’t even care. The pang of disappointment that whips through my body shouldn’t be surprising,
but it is. It’s not that I want her to fight me on this, it’s just that I sort of do.
“Okay?” I press, pulling out the order sheet and deciding to get a jump on tomorrow’s arrangements. “You’re fine with that?”
“Yes?” she says, looking at me in confusion. “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
“Historically, that was your go-to when—”
“I’m not the same person I was, Ducharme,” Nikki says. “I know you aren’t either. If you think having my tongue in you again
is a mistake, then I respect it. Besides I’m high enough on the fact that you just called us friends.”
“No, I didn’t,” I say, ignoring the zap of warmth shooting through me at the thought of—stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Pull yourself together, girl.
“Yes, you did,” she says, tipping her coffee toward me. “Can’t be friends with benefits if we aren’t friends.”
I clear my throat, trying to change the subject as I head to the corner of the store to gather the tulips I’ll need for the
next arrangement. “Please stop talking,” I stammer out, still trying to get a grip.
“Hey,” she says quietly, coming up so close behind me that her breath fans against the skin of my neck. “I want whatever you’ll let me have. I hurt you, badly, in ways that I don’t even know the extent of apparently, and I want to fix it, if I can. Whatever that looks like.”
I pick up another tulip, realizing it might be easier for her to get this out without facing me. “Nikki, I don’t . . .”
“If you tell me all you want from me is to show up every morning with coffee and then immediately leave, I’ll do it. If you
want to see every draft of the book to ensure I don’t include anything you don’t want in there, consider it done. I’ll do
whatever you want me to. The truth is, I didn’t sell this book to hurt you, Andy, I sold it to remember you.”
I turn around to face her. “What?”
“I was starting to forget things about us and I didn’t want to. I didn’t think I would ever see you again. The world is big,
and you disappeared into it so easily,” she says. “I worked really hard to turn myself into someone that I felt would be worthy
of you, even though I knew you might not ever be there to see it. Now you’re here, standing in front of me.
“So yes, if you tell me all I can be is your errand girl, I’ll be that. If you tell me I’ll never taste you again, I’ll respect
it. If you tell me you’ve moved on and don’t love me anymore”—she lets out a shaky breath—“I’ll deal. But I won’t stop showing
up for you until the day you tell me to go and mean it. Because you have me, Andy. You’ve always had me. You just have to
decide if you want me. I can be patient while you do that.”
I’m stunned by her words, nearly letting the flowers slip out of my hands.
I want to soak in every word Nikki just said and believe them, but I know I can’t trust them.
Not yet, and maybe not ever. I need to think.
I need to do whatever I’m going to do the right way this time. I need to . . . respond to her.
“Okay,” I say quietly. “Friends, then, maybe. We can try.” I glance at her messenger bag. “Do you have another chapter in
there for me?”
She smiles. “Yeah, a fun one.”
I raise my eyebrow, unconvinced.
“Remember the time they sent us to Disneyland? Season three?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “I remember you being obsessed with the Dumbo ride even though you’d never seen the movie, and then hating
it when we rented it that night.”
“Uh-huh.” She grins. “What else?”
I tap my chin. “I remember you wearing Mickey ears and calling yourself a Disney kid even though that wasn’t even our network.”
“Hey, anyone can be a Disney kid! It’s not like I called myself a Mouseketeer! I was healing my inner child!”
“Oh, is that why you cried when you met Belle?”
“Oh my god, stop,” she shrieks. “Is there anything less mortifying that you remember?”
I put my arm out, making grabby hands. “No, actually, but I just remembered something even more embarrassing that you did.
Give me the chapter, I want to make sure they all make it in.”
“You’re lucky I lo . . . like being friends with you again,” she says, blushing, as she shoves the papers into my hand.
“Guess I am,” I say, grabbing my pen to scribble down every last cringey story I can think of.
Nikki is back the next morning, and the next. And the next.
In fact, a week of coffee delivery, light chitchat, and chapter reviewing goes by. I can’t help but notice she’s going a little
out of order, only bringing in the funniest, happiest chapters. Each day, as soon we finish, she disappears into the church
straight after.
She won’t tell me what she does there, or anywhere, really, when she’s not here. Still, it’s nice having her around, it is,
and I try hard to appreciate how careful she’s being to respect my boundaries, not to push . . .
But it makes things frustratingly surface-level between us in a way they never have been. Less of a friendship and more of
an acquaintanceship, and now I’m lying in bed after three rounds with my vibrator remembering when it wasn’t.
It’s late, nearly eleven. I have no idea if Nikki still keeps her night owl hours or not, but I’m pressing call on her name
anyway as I curl up against my pillow.
“Hey,” her sleepy voice says, drifting into my ear.
“Did I wake you?”
“It’s okay.” I hear the slide of her sheets as she sits up in her little cabin a mile and a half down the shore. I wish I was there right now too.
Those talks, those neutral, banal, surface-level chats, have somehow only made me miss her more. Maybe that was the point,
maybe respecting my boundaries was just another way for her to push them, and if it was, it worked. It definitely worked.
I’m on the hook, dangling, and all she has to do is reel me in.
“Where do you go when you’re not at the shop?” I ask.
“You’ve seen where I go.”
“After the church,” I say.
“I come back to the cabin and write so that I have another chapter for you the next day. Why? What’s this about?”
“I missed you,” I say, the torrent of words welling up inside of me and clawing their way out. I don’t know what I thought
I would say if she picked up, but it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t in such a pleading, annoyed tone either.
“I’m right here,” Nikki says calmly, reassuringly, frustratingly even, and when did she become the steady one and I the violent
earthquake?
“No, not now, then,” I say. “Forget it, I don’t know why I’m calling.”
“Yes, you do.”
I shake my head. She’s not wrong.
“Whatever you want to say or ask or yell, Ducharme . . . I picked up,” she says. “I’m here.”
“Do you remember that last year that we were together? When you were off networking and partying all the time, and I was grinding
away trying to pick up the slack? I had to get that PA job just to have a little income between auditions because my accounts
kept being overdrawn and I didn’t know why yet.”
“Not well,” she says honestly. “Everything was happening all at once and it was overwhelming. I wasn’t paying attention to
the things that I should have been, plus I was pretty much high or drunk all the time.”
“It never once occurred to you how unfair that all was to me?” I ask, my voice quiet in the still of my apartment. “Really?”
“You never mentioned it,” she answers. “Obviously I knew things were bad between us. I knew you had one foot out the door,
but I thought it was more on principal. I didn’t realize how unhappy you were until you left.”
“Seriously?! That is so—”
“I know,” she says. Her voice steady, steady, steady amidst the whiplash of my emotions. “I was horrible and self-centered
and overexcited. That’s what happens when you’re raised on set. You grow up too fast, too selfish, and immature. I was barely
into my twenties, high on praise and gifts and . . . yeah, a lot of other shit too. It was easy not to see the hard stuff,”
she admits. “It wasn’t even that I was ignoring it. I just, there were a lot of times I couldn’t look outside of myself at
all. I understand how awful that must have felt. I wish there was a way to—”
“I hated you.”
“Good.” She sighs, as if she had been waiting for this moment and is maybe even relieved it’s finally happening.
“I might hate you still.”
“You should.”
“Then why are you bringing me coffee every day?”
“Because you let me, and I’m hoping that means someday you won’t hate me.”
“That’s pathetic.” I let out a nervous laugh. “And not like you at all.”
“You don’t know me anymore,” she says, and I can hear her smile through the phone. “I’ll have you know there’s little about
the new me that isn’t pathetic, at least when it comes to you. I meant it when I said you had me.”
I roll over and shove my face in the pillow, fighting back a squeal even though I should still be upset, still be holding her accountable.
“Hey, you still there?” Her voice comes out small and tinny from where I dropped my phone.
The little voice from the back of my head says Don’t trust her, but . . .
“Hi. Yes. Sorry. I, um, dropped the phone. But that’s all very . . . nice. You’re saying all the right things.”
“I mean them. I want to do all the right things too, but I know it’s gonna take time. You don’t have to forgive the old me;
you don’t even have to stop hating her. I’m just asking for you to meet me as I am now and decide if I’m someone you think
is worth knowing or not.”
“Yeah,” I say. I let the words linger between us a little longer before I add, “See you tomorrow, then?”
“See you tomorrow,” she says, and I can almost picture her sleep-warmed smile as I set my phone down and burrow under the
blankets.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?